Statistics

A Framework for Representing Reticulate Evolution

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Acyclic directed graphs (ADGs) are increasingly being viewed as
more appropriate for representing certain evolutionary relationships, particu-
larly in biology, than rooted trees. In this paper, we develop a framework for
the analysis of these graphs which we call hybrid phylogenies. We are particu-
larly interested in the problem whereby one is given a set of phylogenetic trees
and wishes to determine a hybrid phylogeny that ‘embeds’ each of these trees
and which requires the smallest number of hybridisation events. We show that
this quantity can be greatly reduced if additional species are involved, and
investigate other combinatorial aspects of this and related questions